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Like all the other vitamins, vitamin D or commonly called the “sunshine vitamin” is extremely important for your overall health. Vitamin D is a critical fat-soluble vitamin that is needed by the human body to maintain serum calcium, which supports the cellular processes, neuromuscular function and bone density. Vitamin D helps in regulating the cellular growth and reduces the systematic redness and swelling in the body. It further promotes calcium absorption in the body, which leads to the development of stronger bones. Vitamin D also plays an important role in the immune response and is essential for the weight management, prevention of osteoporosis, cancer, fighting depression; enhance brain function, boosting immunity and diabetes.

Like all the other vitamins, vitamin D or commonly called the “sunshine vitamin” is extremely important for your overall health.Photo Credit: iStock

Also read: Vitamin B3: Healthy Benefits And Foods That Are Rich In Vitamin B3

Some of the common symptoms of vitamin D deficiency are getting sick very often, tiredness, chronic pain the bones, depression, digestive issues, trouble in sleeping, excessive sweating, inflammation and swelling, wounds that do not heal quickly and weak bones. Vitamin D deficiency could lead to serious medical conditions like high blood sugar levels, high blood pressure, brittle bones and even cancer in some severe cases.

6 simple ways to boost your vitamin D levels:

1. Sunshine:

The most simple and an effective way to get vitamin D is spending some time in the sun. Vitamin D is known as the sunshine vitamin because our bodies can actually absorb vitamin D from exposure to the sun. Adequate sun exposure can be really helpful to boost your vitamin D intake.

2. Mushrooms:

Extremely healthy and a delicious source of vitamin

Like all the other vitamins, vitamin D or commonly called the “sunshine vitamin” is extremely important for your overall health. Vitamin D is a critical fat-soluble vitamin that is needed by the human body to maintain serum calcium, which supports the cellular processes, neuromuscular function and bone density. Vitamin D helps in regulating the cellular growth and reduces the systematic redness and swelling in the body. It further promotes calcium absorption in the body, which leads to the development of stronger bones. Vitamin D also plays an important role in the immune response and is essential for the weight management, prevention of osteoporosis, cancer, fighting depression; enhance brain function, boosting immunity and diabetes.

Like all the other vitamins, vitamin D or commonly called the “sunshine vitamin” is extremely important for your overall health.Photo Credit: iStock

Also read: Vitamin B3: Healthy Benefits And Foods That Are Rich In Vitamin B3

Some of the common symptoms of vitamin D deficiency are getting sick very often, tiredness, chronic pain the bones, depression, digestive issues, trouble in sleeping, excessive sweating, inflammation and swelling, wounds that do not heal quickly and weak bones. Vitamin D deficiency could lead to serious medical conditions like high blood sugar levels, high blood pressure, brittle bones and even cancer in some severe cases.

6 simple ways to boost your vitamin D levels:

1. Sunshine:

The most simple and an effective way to get vitamin D is spending some time in the sun. Vitamin D is known as the sunshine vitamin because our bodies can actually absorb vitamin D from exposure to the sun. Adequate sun exposure can be really helpful to boost your vitamin D intake.

2. Mushrooms:

Extremely healthy and a delicious source of vitamin D mushrooms can be easily included in your diet. Mushrooms are also rich in other vitamins like B vitamins and potassium. You can easily include mushrooms in your diet by adding them in your salads, sandwiches, soups and wraps.

3. Egg yolk:

Yet another reason to include eggs in our daily diet! But Vitamin D is found only in the yolk of the egg. Whole eggs in general contain all the essential amino acids and are an excellent source of choline and healthy fats. So, if you are vitamin D deficient, include whole eggs in your early morning breakfast or evening snacks

D mushrooms can be easily included in your diet. Mushrooms are also rich in other vitamins like B vitamins and potassium. You can easily include mushrooms in your diet by adding them in your salads, sandwiches, soups and wraps.

3. Egg yolk:

Yet another reason to include eggs in our daily diet! But Vitamin D is found only in the yolk of the egg. Whole eggs in general contain all the essential amino acids and are an excellent source of choline and healthy fats. So, if you are vitamin D deficient, include whole eggs in your early morning breakfast or evening snacks

If you’ve ever used a Sennheiser headset or speakerphone device with your Mac (or Windows PC), the accompanying HeadSetup app has left your machine wide open to attack.

In what has been described as a ‘monumental security blunder,’ the app allows a bad actor to successfully impersonate any secure website on the Internet …

ArsTechnica explains.

To allow Sennheiser headphones and speaker phones to work seamlessly with computers, HeadSetup establishes an encrypted Websocket with a browser. It does this by installing a self-signed TLS certificate in the central place an operating system reserves for storing browser-trusted certificate authority roots. In Windows, this location is called the Trusted Root CA certificate store. On Macs, it’s known as the macOS Trust Store.

The critical HeadSetup vulnerability stems from a self-signed root certificate installed by version 7.3 of the app that kept the private cryptographic key in a format that could be easily extracted. Because the key was identical for all installations of the software, hackers could use the root certificate to generate forged TLS certificates that impersonated any HTTPS website on the Internet. Although the self-signed certificates were blatant forgeries, they will be accepted as authentic on computers that store the poorly secured certificate root. Even worse, a forgery defense known as certificate pinning would do nothing to detect the hack.

Although the app encrypted the key with a passphrase, the passphrase itself (SennheiserCC) was stored in plaintext in a configuration file.

“It took us a few minutes to extract the passphrase from the binary,” Secorvo researcher André Domnick told Ars. From then on, he effectively had control of a certificate authority that any computer that had installed the vulnerable Sennheiser app would trust until 2027, when the root certificate was set to expire. Dominick created a proof-of-concept attack that created a single certificate […] that spoofed Google, Sennheiser, and three of Sennheiser’s competitors.

Even if you later uninstalled the app, the certificate would still be trusted. All Mac users who have ever used the HeadSetup app should manually uninstall the certificate by following Sennheiser’s instructions. (The instructions leave out the first step, which is to ensure you’re in the Finder.)

If you still use the app, you can download the latest version of HeadSet, which should also delete the vulnerable certificate, but the safest option would be to do it manually as above first

Ever since Japanese ‘organizing consultant’ Marie Kondo’s consistently best-selling 2011 opus The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up de-cluttering has become an international obsession, part of a pseudo-spiritual quest for more meaningful living. And with good reason; according to the UK arm of US weight loss business Weight Watchers there is currently at least £10.5bn of unworn items in Britain’s wardrobes. While part of that figure comes from too-wishful thinking (the extra pounds never shifted, the clothes that never fit) there’s also the more significant story of too much stuff presenting a simple lack of visibility, clouding our judgement regarding what we need or want to buy next. The result is a vastly unsatisfying cycle of irrelevant things and increasingly flabby shopper-brand relationships.

Reclaiming the peace of mind that comes with neither wasting precious resources or your own cold hard cash is what London-based Save Your Wardrobe Co-Founder Hasna Kourda, an economics and corporate strategy graduate and a former luxury fashion sales assistant, is banking on: “When I worked in retail I saw a massive loss of trust between consumers and brands because people constantly felt they were being given the hard sell, not serviced according to what they really wanted or needed. Part of the aim of this concept, which fundamentally remedies the fact most people don’t even know what’s in their own wardrobe, is to re-build loyalty and create relevancy, which will raise sales figures if not numbers of ‘things’ sold.”

The app, which is free to users (brands will pay for the data/insights it delivers) is rooted in the building of an entire virtual wardrobe. This happens in two ways to encompass both new and existing items. Firstly, using advanced computer vision tech users can photograph their existing clothing which the system will then categorize, in most cases even establishing the brand. Secondly, users can allow (ostensibly via Google GOOGL +0.21%permissions) their digital receipts to be automatically read. Assuming the brand in question is affiliated to SYW via an AP the system will recognize the SKU, allowing it to register every detail including size, color, and date of purchase. A 30-day cooling period will adjust the data should items be returned.

In order to avoid the system becoming nothing more than a backwards-looking personal fashion filter bubble -rendering it much harder to offer suggestions or predict new influences – SYW is currently working with vast fashion shopping network ShopStyle’s database of brands so users can also browse a vast number of brands to create product wish-lists. Later, it will also tap into users’ social media activity to flesh out their profiles still further.

The system will also be connected to users’ calendars, so it knows, for example, when they’re due to go on holiday, and to where, or when they have a job interview coming up and will send them product recommendations. Users have a dashboard showing both their curated selections of clothing for various occasions (“playlists of outfits”) as well as their full digitized wardrobe, generating an enormous sense of control.

For brands investing in the concept as a tool to help them plan, produce, market and/or buy more accurately, the critical factor is that it will provide a window onto tastes and preferences, grouping users into clusters and micro segments – essentially people exhibiting similar desires, behaviors or attitudes. Because it straddles multiple brands it’s a more realistic reflection of real life; the non-brand-monogamous consumer at play .

A second layer, devised to take the intelligence offered to the next level, is the introduction of a suite of core services – dry cleaning, repairs, re-sales and alteration – that Kourda believes will spotlight how users feel about their clothing. It will, she suggests, present a kind of longer-than-usual narrative for products, understanding them not as single purchases but an ongoing story that reflects the attitudes of their owners. “This is where online fashion retail has become slightly unstuck,” says Kourda. “It doesn’t present the full picture of searching, buying and aftercare over time and nor does it tap into the notion of buying mindfully.”

Furthering the notion of a more mindful mode of operating in general, drawing on her own experiences of luxury selling, Kourda believes the app’s success will lie in “assisting not annoying people with relentless alerts. It’s about understanding the key moments. For that reason, we won’t be pestering people by sending notifications [that appear outside the app, on users’ home-screens]. We believe that getting the timing right is what will create a ‘sticky’ system’.” No ads, nor sponsored content affirm a commitment to useful engagement over mercenary marketing.

As with any algorithm/machine learning based system the more parties involved and the more data is accrued the more pertinent the suggestions. “There is an opportunity here for real relevancy, rather than creating product and then working out how to sell it to people,” says Kourda. “We want people [customers and brands] not to think of store as cash machines chasing money but places for amplified experiences and connections. Customers want to feel ‘seen’, they actively expect it.”

Not just gaming or entertainment, virtual reality (VR) can also help people recall information better as opposed to desktop computers, say researchers including one of Indian-origin.

The team from University of Maryland conducted in-depth analyses on whether people learn better through virtual, immersive environments, as opposed to more traditional platforms like a computers or tablets.

They found that people remember information better if it is presented to them in a virtual environment.

“This data is exciting in that it suggests that immersive environments could offer new pathways for improved outcomes in education and high-proficiency training,” said Amitabh Varshney, Professor of Computer Science, in a survey published in the journal Virtual Reality.

Varshney leads several major research efforts involving virtual and augmented reality (AR), including close collaboration with health care professionals interested in developing AR-based diagnostic tools for emergency medicine and VR training for surgical residents.

For the study, the team used the concept of a “memory palace,” where people recall an object or item by placing it in an imaginary physical location like a building or town.

This method has been used since classical times, taking advantage of the human brain’s ability to spatially organize thoughts and memories.

“Humans have always used visual-based methods to help them remember information, whether it’s cave drawings, clay tablets, printed text and images, or video,” said Eric Krokos, doctoral student in computer science and lead author on the paper.

“We wanted to see if virtual reality might be the next logical step in this progression,” Krokos added.

For the study, the researchers recruited 40 volunteers unfamiliar with virtual reality and split the participants into two groups – one viewed information first via a VR head-mounted display and then on a desktop and the other group did the opposite.

The results showed an 8.8 per cent improvement overall in recall accuracy using the VR headsets, a statistically significant number.

Many of the participants said the immersive “presence” while using VR allowed them to focus better.

“This leads to the possibility that an immersive virtual environment could enhance learning and recall by leveraging a person’s overall sense of body position, movement and acceleration,” said Catherine Plaisant, Senior Research Scientist in University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.